Helping you find an ideal workspace

Office space Bangalore India

Now that you have decided to move out of the home office or the shared workspace and have an office space of your own. That’s really a great move for you as a business owner. It just means that you’ve seen your business growing and it’s the main reason for you to think of having an office space of your own. It’s really a good decision that you have made, but you have to be very careful while setting up your office as it’s the time that your business is picking up, and one wrong thing can cost you your business. Especially the office space; it plays a vital role in the success of any business. Here are a few tips that can help you set up an ideal office for your start-up.

Work Together and Plan Your Space

It’s always a plus for you to consider the inputs of others, specifically your employees, when you are ideating or creating a blueprint for the look and feel of your start-up space. They provide you the most valuable insights on what exactly they need in their office in order to be more efficient and productive; like conference room design, equipment preferences and other basic amenities.

Most often, the employees provide you the insights that you might have missed during the planning or solo brainstorming sessions. When you consult your employees to provide you some inputs on setting up the space, you will certainly obtain different perspectives on the things like conference room usage, the work flow and so on, which can later be employed while setting up the office space.

In order to gather the inputs of your employees, you can consider holding a catered lunch or an interactive brainstorming session. You can also opt for a simple employee survey by using the services like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey.

Consider the Growing Potential

When you are setting up your office, it’s highly important for you to consider the incremental growth of your company, as it’s more likely for the employee headcount to grow as the start-up scales. But it’s quite obvious that, nobody would want to change the offices for every 5 or 10 employees they add.

Considering the growing potential of the company, you can choose the furniture needed accordingly. If your company seems to grow and if you are in a plan to add few more employees, you can choose the space that can accommodate all the employees. You can also add or remove pieces on the furniture to accommodate few more employees.

Customize the Space To Your Company’s Identity

Just because the neighbour start-up has employed open plan design for the office, you don’t necessarily have to go with the same open plan design. Ultimately the main purpose of an office is the functionality and productivity. But you should never forget the brand value of your business and also the vibe; you should never go out of it. All that you need to do is to identify the ways to design your start-up space such that it reflects the company’s ethos.

One of the simplest and cost effective ways to bring the company culture to life is to decorate the conference rooms in such a way that it adds a bit of fun while also supplementing the productivity purposes. You just have to bear in mind that a customized office space can be a great advocate for your brand while also being a retention tool.

As and when the company starts to gain traction, many changes are bound to be along the way. So it’s very important to roll with the changes and be open for continuous adoption to find out what works and what doesn’t. You just have to create an environment that fosters innovation and help your employees solve the problem easily.

Signing a permanent office lease is a big threat even for big organizations. It’s tough to identify how much space you will require in a year or two. And, if something goes wrong, you could be left with vacant desks and serious bills to pay. Similarly, entrepreneurs don’t feel like paying for real estate until they are sure that the project is going to fly.

At the instance of starting up, expenses of setting up an office can be a main stumbling block for entrepreneurs. But these days’ startups are finding rent-free workspaces. There are accelerators which provide this ability to start ups, usually in swap over equity.

But at present entrepreneurs are searching other types of free space close at hand.

Here are 3 types of workspaces that entrepreneurs can get for free:

Community-Sponsored Space

To support fiscal development, chamber of commerce in a few cities offer free office space with the help of local government and businesses. The programs need free office space with the assistance of local government and businesses. These programs need entrepreneurs to put forward a business idea and show its growth potential.

Possessing physical office space is very legitimizing. Meeting with business people and accountants in the free office space rather than at home makes a huge difference. Startups are also stimulated to take part in group events.

Co-working Space

Co-working spaces provide an office-like atmosphere free of cost to entrepreneurs, generally lone founders who would otherwise be working from their homes. Organizations interested in aiming entrepreneurs run these competencies, and some have an application process. The shared space also gives a routine to entrepreneurs and keeps them from going unoccupied at home. But these are unlike regular office. Most co-working spaces have big tables, making it difficult to make phone calls or hold meetings due to noise level. You also cannot add employees easily because of inadequate space and shortage of dedicated desks.

University Space

To develop entrepreneurship on campus, a lot of universities provide free office space through on-campus incubator programs. Claimants must offer a practical business strategy to meet the criteria for space, and nearly every university incubators need that at least one member of the startup be an alumnus or student.

Bangalore Surpasses Demand for Office Space

Cushman & Wakefield’s (C&W) and Global Real Estate Institute’s (GRI) yearly report ‘Embracing Change – Scripting the prospect of Indian Real Estate estimations the total commercial office spacerequirement to be just about 200 million sq. ft in the leading 7 cities as against a slightly higher supply of 243 million sq ft.

The report considered demand and supply for Mumbai, NCR, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata in which Cushman & Wakefield Research team, projected demand and supply for the period 2011-2015.

Bangalore will observe the maximum demand of roughly 57.3 million sq ft. followed by NCR (34.4 mn sq ft.) and Mumbai (33.9 mn sq ft). However, during this period, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata are anticipated to observe an improved rate of growth as against the others.

The overall estimated supply for the era for the top 7 cities will be just about 243 million sq.ft. which is greater than demand by 17%.

The maximum projected supply of Grade A office will be observed in Mumbai (78 million sq. ft.) followed by NCR (40 mn sq.ft.), Chennai (30 mn. Sq.ft.) and Pune (29 mn. Sq.ft.).

With the exemption of Bangalore, where demand outshines supply, all other cities are anticipated to experience some oversupply situation.

In Mumbai, supply is anticipated to exceed demand by 125% by the end of 5 years and thus is projected to experience some downward pricing tendency.

Once you have chose your options for office space and you like them, the next step is to acquire the best deal possible. But at times knowing what to bargain is peculiarly complicated. Landlords may be worried to congest empty spaces, but they are also keen to make up for the money and except you are not cautious, that negotiation lease you sign now can be filled with hidden charges, rising fees and clauses that knock down when you would least anticipate it.

Obtaining great deals on office space is a blend of market timing, and good tenant planning.

The real estate office market has strike a tipping point. With increasing vacancies and new sublease opportunities coming to market daily, when it comes to renting an office space it’s the tenants market. Rental rates are falling and will continue to do so. Landlords and Business centers are providing huge concessions to new tenants, but you won’t get the finest deal except for you know what to request. Smart business leaders know this as a suitable time to leverage their tenancy and take benefit from the market conditions. To take advantage of current market conditions business managers must bear in mind the following important success factors:

1. What is the Optimum Price?

When moving closer to the negotiating table, the peculiar tenant who’s doing this for the first time is most centered on obtaining the monthly rent as low as possible. This is the most frequent mistake tenants commit when a broker is not representing them. The correct way to scrutinize a deal is to consider its total value (i.e. annual value, taxes, lease period, free rental period and other charges). That’s the way landlords evaluate deals, and that’s what you should also do.

2. When to Initiate this Process?

Start the process early. This offers negotiating leverage and wiggle room. Initiate at least a year months before your lease ending date. Exploring the options can take 3 months, negotiating a lease can take 2 months, and if there is building new developments at another location can take 3 months or more. Set aside a generous amount of extra time for unforeseen delays in the leasing process.

3. Don’t Give a Hint

In no way give your landlord the feeling that their space is the only one that works for your company. Always create numerous feasible leasing options. Obtain proposals from each. Don’t grant a positive suggestion to any landlord until you have a fully executed new lease or lease renewal document with you.

4. Do your Groundwork

Always employ a tenant cost comparison spreadsheet. This spreadsheet comprises pricing of the potential offices you have chosen. Make the landlords completely aware of the fact that you will be directly weighing and comparing their lease suggestions with a tailored Excel spreadsheet. Put in the main factors from your different lease proposals. Make use of the resulting bottom line cost comparison as your major negotiating lever with each landlord to bring down the price of the competing sites. While making use of a tenant cost assessment spreadsheet, make sure that the landlord at each leasing option is offering you all the key cost factors you require. If it is clear that any landlord is delaying cost comparison details, just remove that property from the catalog of competing options.

Put in key factors on base rent increases, tax and operating escalations, and other cost areas that increase over time.

Use the cost comparison keenly in your negotiations to eradicate, lessen or limit the landlord profit centers.

5. Obtain a Representative

Before starting the process, think about engaging an office tenant representative broker. If you are proficient in your business, you are most likely not a skilled in the profitable real estate office leasing business. Market dynamics change each day. An expert office lease negotiator is much better prepared to influence the market to the tenant’s fiscal advantage. Wait for each prospective landlord to be an expert office lease negotiator, controlling the office leasing market to the landlord’s economic advantage. If you settle on to employ a tenant representative, think about choosing one from an exclusive tenant rep commercial real estate firm. There are a lot of firms in the commercial real estate industry who stand for both landlords and tenants. This practice is observed by many tenants as a main clash.

Inquire your office tenant representative broker about economic details on current office leasing transactions in your local office market. The more deal your tenant rep broker has to reference, the more efficient he or she will be in influencing the local office market. Appoint your own commercial real estate architect to confirm the accurateness of the affirmed usable square footage of the office space.

Speak to other office tenants frankly regarding a potential landlord’s reputation in the areas of office building management and fair dealing.